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Kudos to the Rev. Sharon Solt Harfman for her excellent and timely Faith and Values column. She discusses the ridiculous tax-exempt status of major sports leagues, while they reap millions, if not billions, of profits for their league owners and millions of dollars in salaries and benefits (many tax-deferred) for their executives. Then she effectively contrasts these excessive tax breaks, which also apply to many of our hugely profitable major corporations, with underfunded and understaffed agencies that serve the poor and truly needy. She calls for compassion in making our tax system more equitable, which would allow more adequate services for the less fortunate. I know some people are...

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Kudos to the Rev. Sharon Solt Harfman for her excellent and timely Faith and Values column.She discusses the ridiculous tax-exempt status of major sports leagues, while they reap millions, if not billions, of profits for their league owners and millions...

HARRISBURG -- The state has agreed to a nearly $49 million settlement with the federal government to resolve claims that it improperly paid public benefits to people who were ineligible between 2004 and 2010, according to a copy of the agreement.The state...

How precious in the sight of progressives was one of their saints, Mario Cuomo, the three-term governor of New York who died last week at age 82. He was a model of progressivism and a gifted rhetorician.In most media accounts, references were made to...

The Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley will be 50 years old next year at this time. I wish that, come Dec. 15, 2015, CACLV could declare victory in the War on Poverty, which spawned the agency, and go home.
Alas, it ain't gonna happen.
What...

Reading all these year-in-review recaps has left me a little groggy, so forgive me if my own look at 2014's top stories veers in and out of reality.
January
Phillies announce that Chris Wheeler and Sarge Matthews will be leaving the broadcast booth...

HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett this summer achieved what few thought was possible: Overcoming unlikely odds, the Republican won Obama administration approval for Pennsylvania to run its own version of Medicaid expansion.
With that the program to bring...

Everybody knows what happened to Marie Antoinette when she displayed insufficient concern for the poor of France while pursuing a dissolute life of pleasure and extravagance for herself and other plutocrats from places like Austria and Prussia.
While...

Americans say they want politicians to tackle the big issues and get things done. In 2008, they even elected a presidential candidate who said he was interested in "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."Yet almost every time...

As polls have predicted for more than a year, education funding has become the most tangible issue for voters in the upcoming governor's election.The candidates know it, as evidenced by commercials and news conferences across Pennsylvania.For the past...

The faculty speaker at a recent commencement spoke glowingly of the "revolution of the Sixties" and praised those who labor for the extension of that revolution today.
The revolution actually began before the Sixties and has enjoyed...

Disillusionment with Washington has rarely run higher. Congress is unable to act even in areas where there is widespread agreement that measures are necessary, such as immigration, infrastructure spending and business tax reform.The Obama...

Last week's blog item on the degree to which litter blights our streets and highways (not to mention park land and just about every kind of outdoor space imaginable), and my call for suggestions on how we might convince fellow warriors to refrain from this tho

Microphone in hand and standing atop the sound truck, the raspy-voiced protest leader jabbed his finger into the air shouting for the ouster of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, igniting wild cheers from the crowd below him. "What Lula and Dilma...

Republicans pushed a balanced-budget blueprint toward post-midnight Senate approval early Friday, laying down conservative markers for a likely veto struggle with President Barack Obama over their plans to end deficits, cut trillions in spending and...

Normally quarrelsome House Republicans came together Wednesday night and passed a boldly conservative budget that relies on nearly $5 trillion in cuts to eliminate deficits over the next decade, calls for repealing the health care law and envisions...

Normally quarrelsome House Republicans came together Wednesday night and passed a boldly conservative budget that relies on nearly $5 trillion in cuts to eliminate deficits over the next decade, calls for repealing the health care law and envisions...

WASHINGTON Think the U.S. Supreme Court is pro- business? Try telling that to the utility industry. Coal-dependent power companies have taken a pounding at the high court over the last decade, most recently with two losses last year on Obama...

A budding bipartisan deal to shelter physicians from Medicare cuts, championed by the House's two top leaders, is drawing powerful allies including the American Medical Association and a rainbow of conservative and liberal groups. House aides released...

A battle between GOP defense hawks and fiscal conservatives prompted the GOP chairman of the House Budget Committee late Wednesday to delay a vote on his party's budget blueprint. Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., called off a vote on a move by GOP leaders to loosen...

Republicans in Congress advanced balanced-budget plans bristling with cuts in Medicaid and other benefit programs Thursday, determined to make a down payment on last fall's campaign promise to erase deficits by the end of the decade.
Last-minute...